


The Opposite of Hope is Wisdom

by TwoCatsTailoring



Category: The Arcana (Visual Novel)
Genre: Anger, F/M, Female Apprentice, Jealousy, Mild Angst, asra has feelings, handling emotions like an adult
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-28
Updated: 2019-01-28
Packaged: 2019-10-18 00:57:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17571260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TwoCatsTailoring/pseuds/TwoCatsTailoring
Summary: Asra struggles with his feelings for Lranja, now that life has settled into a comfortable normal.





	The Opposite of Hope is Wisdom

Asra slipped in the back door of the shop and paused for a moment, listening.

“... not as often. So maybe…,” Lranja’s voice came through the curtain between the front and back rooms and Asra could hear the little line between her brows that she always got when she was considering something seriously.

“Second shelf down? Between Henbane and Jimson to keep the system going?”

Ilya. Of course he would be here. 

If Asra was gone, Lranja stayed at the shop every night so that it wouldn’t be left empty and Ilya stayed at his house, in case he had overnight patients. That meant that he would spend part of his day here. That was just how it worked, these days. How could he forget?

At least he made himself useful and not just distracting. 

That wasn’t fair of Asra to think and he knew it. But he was tired and it was easier to be annoyed when he was tired. He unwound his scarf and hung it and his bag up as the muffled voices in the front room continued on with their conversation. 

Six months had all but flown by. The Devil back where he belonged, Lucio was not causing anyone any more trouble, business was booming, and life had settled in to a bustling normal. He should be thrilled! And most of the time, he was. But sometimes….

Asra shook himself mentally and pushed through the curtain into the front room just as Julian threw an arm around Lranja’s shoulders and kissed her temple.

“Not a bad afternoon’s work, eh Lranja?”

“Not bad at all,” she agreed with an arm around his waist, a finger hooked into the sash at his waist, and a smile as sweet and genuine as any he ever saw on her face. “Asra!” Her eyes went wide when she spotted him, “You’re back!”

He winced but smiled through it, hoping she wouldn’t notice.“Yes, and I found everything I went for and then some.”

Lranja ducked out from under Julian’s arm and frowning now, crossed the floor in a couple of quick paces, “Are you okay, Asra? You look pale.” She pressed a hand to his forehead, checking for a fever.

She noticed. She always noticed. “Just a headache,” he lied. Only not really because he was getting one now. “You’ve done good work in here,” he offered, sweeping a hand over the array of shelves behind the counter with neatly labeled bottles and drawers and boxes in alphabetical order, effectively moving himself out of her range of touch.

Lranja set her mouth into a line and nodded, looking over the shop’s wares. “It really needed a good going-through.” She turned back to him and asked, “Do you want to go lay down for a while? It’s been quiet today and I don’t really expect anyone else. The circus got in to town yesterday, so I think most people are at that.”

“And we will be tomorrow,” Julian tossed an indulgent smile Lranja’s way. “Do you want to come too, Asra? Pasha is coming and she’s trying to talk Nadia into tagging along, incognito of course.”

Asra nodded, silent agreement that the shop had been a bit of a mess and that he would like to leave the room. “Who could pass that up? After a good rest, though.” Did Julian ever stop looking at her? Even for a minute?

“If you want.” Best to change the subject, “The herbs I found are in the inside pocket of my bag. The other stuff is rolled up in my spare shirt. You can show me where you put everything later on?” Asra said all this as he made his way towards the curtain again to climb the stairs. 

“I’ll take care of it,” she said. “Rest well, the water in the basin has lavender in it but the kitchen’s is fresh.”

Asra nodded and slipped up the stairs, letting out a breath that he didn’t realize he’d been holding. He wasn’t sure what it was about today that had all this aggravation bubbling up but he could do without it.

_ Jealous? _

The little voice came to him across the comfort of his constant connection with Faust. And she was right.

_ A little bit _ , he admitted. 

Faust’s scoff was a feeling more than something he could hear and he knew he deserved that. Asra let Faust wriggle free of his shirt before he flopped down on the bed and raked a hand down his face. 

All in all, at least this didn’t happen much - this sort of fed-up-and-irritated thing. Maybe he was just overtired, but right now, just knowing that they were downstairs, being quietly domestic, putting things away, talking about tomorrow’s outing, doing all the things that he had done or dreamed about doing with Lranja made him so…

So…

So mad! And sad! And…

_ JEALOUS. _

Asra lifted up his head to look Faust in her small face and stuck out his tongue at her. She blepped back at him before winding away, down the bedpost in search of a drink. 

Fine, he was jealous. This wasn’t new news. In his ideal world, in his dreams and his goals for years this was not an outcome that he’d ever seen as a possibility. Yes, he’d known the risks. The Fool had warned him - the future was nothing but possibility. This hadn’t been done before, nobody knew exactly what life would look like for her once she had their body. The choices she would make would be hers.

And he’d taken those odds, and he’d taken the years that came after - of uncertainty, of pain, of setbacks and leaps forward and all the myriad of emotions that came because he had her back. That was all he’d wanted, right? He’d run away once before, the stupidest thing he’d ever done, and he wasn’t going to do it again. He wasn’t going to lose her again because he was stubborn and selfish.

And he didn’t. He stayed, even when it was hard to watch her not know - him, her own power, her family history, the shop she was raised in. Even though he’d had to get away a few times when it was just too much for him. But he was never gone for too long, and he always came back. Always came home to her because she was his past, his present. And yes, she’d been the future he’d wanted, even if it didn’t get back to what they’d had before. 

He’d been ready for that. Fine with it, even. 

But he hadn’t been ready for her to pick somebody else entirely. 

And he had really not been ready for that person to be Ilya Devorak. The last person to have seen her, talked to her while she was alive. The one person who might have been able to help her, to slow down the plague long enough for him to have come back and… said goodbye? Saved her? 

What exactly had he thought he could do? Really? If he was being completely honest with himself, what did he actually think he could have accomplished if he’d made it back in time? Nothing, nothing at all, that’s what. 

It had been so easy to hate Ilya - Julian. He was so dramatic, so needy, so open. He was everything that Asra struggled to understand. He was judgemental about magic, believed so blindly in science. A perfectionist who hated himself for his own failings that he set up in this first place. Asra, angry, hurting, and desperate, had no patience for any of that.

And his Lranja, who had lost patience with Asra’s reticence and secretiveness over the years, had nothing but patience for Ilya. 

Oh, how that rankled. How she’d sat at the kitchen table, unhappy and hurt because of Ilya being Ilya the night he’d returned from Nopal, but still perfectly willing to give him another chance. 

What about  _ his  _ chance? What about the years of keeping his feelings for her to himself in order to protect her? What about all the times he’d tried to tell her how much he loved her only to have her break down again? What about all the times he’d worked with her, bringing her back, teaching her how to center herself and forget, forget, so that she could still live some level of a normal life? 

Even as he had the thoughts, he knew they were wrong. Well, maybe not wrong in the sense that he shouldn’t have them at all, because that was a moot point. He did have them but acting on them would be wrong. Just like he wouldn’t want anyone telling him that he wasn’t allowed to think that Ilya was a show-off and tiring, he wouldn't tell Lranja what she could and couldn't do.

But, he had come very close. Too close. And he’d never done it again because the look that she gave him when he’d told her that he wasn’t going to tell her what to do and that she could make her own mistakes, had cut him to the bone. The memory of that look - the flash of anger, the betrayal, her understanding of everything that he wasn’t saying right then - was what kept him from voicing it ever again.

As much as he wanted her all for himself, he wanted even more to make sure he didn’t cause her any more pain. 

So why was he struggling  _ now _ ? Was there something about the timing? Was the moon doing something weird? He knew Mercury wasn’t in retrograde. But maybe Venus was? 

Maybe it was simpler than that. It had been almost half a year since they’d sat down with Asra, Nadia, and Portia and explained their plan. They’d rushed, dove headfirst into each other, talking about heading out to see the world as soon as they could once the mess with Lucio was cleared up. But before they did that, they wanted to make sure that what they felt now was going to last. So for a year, hopefully a peaceful year, they would stay in Vesuvia - Lranja at the shop, Julian setting up his practice along more general lines - and see how it worked out.

They were six months into that now and happier than ever. They had managed, because of, or maybe in spite of their very different personalities, to build their lives around one another almost seamlessly. It was actually beautiful - Asra wasn’t so deep in his own bitterness that he couldn't admit that - how they wove themselves together, balancing one another in the places where they were weak. What Lranja lacked in confidence in crowds, Julian made up for in putting everyone around him at ease. What Julian lacked in trust, Lranja made up for in her unshaken faith in others. His pessimism, her optimism. Her untidy habits and his knack for organization. His worry, her confidence. There could be no doubt now - they were going to last.

Asra knew that he’d hit the nail on the head with that because of the empty spot that opened up in his chest at the thought. Had he really been holding out some hope that they wouldn’t last? Had he been that cruel? 

But, was it really all that cruel to hope, even just a little bit, even without really realizing that he had been? Not to them, he didn’t think. He could hear the hum of their voices, whispering so as to not wake him as they gathered up cups and the kettle in the kitchen. Lranja’s stifled laughter, her mumbled exclamation and Julian’s footsteps doubling back for whatever she’d forgotten before they slipped back down the stairs.

No, the cruelty wasn’t to  _ them  _ to have held onto hope for this long. He’d have to be more mindful in the future. He took a deep breath and let it out in a shaky sigh. 

_ Better? _ Faust’s inquiry came as she slid under the door.

_ Almost. Sometimes it’s hard, learning about yourself. _ Asra explained as he reached down to let Faust curl around his arm.

_ Will be okay _ . She reassured him as she coiled up on a pillow in the late afternoon sunlight. 

Asra smiled and tossed a blanket over his legs. Now he really did have a headache. All the emotional gymnastics left him even more tired than he had been before.

_ Will be. Lots of ways to love. _

She was right again. And the best one that he had was supporting both of them however  _ they  _ needed him to.


End file.
